The time for planning Lady’s Island’s future is now
There are eleven different plans dealing with growth and development on Lady’s Island dating back to 1999. Among them is the 2018 Lady’s Island Plan, adopted by the City of Beaufort and Beaufort County after more than four years of work.
By and large, all these plans sit, untouched, on government office shelves.
In the meantime, Lady’s Island continues to grow. City and county boards and commissions make development decisions based on an incomplete foundation. The Lady’s Island Plan detailed a clear vision for the area, and the county and city have discussed the need ad nauseam, but neither have been willing to commit and fund an effort sufficient to make the vision real.
It needs to happen.
Lady’s Island’s population is on par with the city of Beaufort’s. Unlike the city, its population continues to rise, surging by 12% since 2010, with no signs of slowing down.
More cars are coming. Vehicle traffic on the Sea Island Parkway is forecast to grow more than 50% in the next 15 years.
More homes are built each day. The Lady’s Island Plan reported 8,795 dwelling units currently permitted under current regulations, enough to accommodate 20,000 new residents. Another 187 new homes are planned at Gleason’s Farm. Forty more are to be built on E. Miller Drive. The development agreement for Upper Cane Island would bring 400 new homes and 185,000 square feet of commercial space.
Much of the commercial development on Lady’s Island is aging. We need to plan for redevelopment for most of the existing shopping areas along the Sea Island Parkway. Think Grayco. Sea Island Shopping Center. The Food Lion shopping center off Sam’s Point Road.
We’re not ready for all this, and we need to be. If we fail to act, Lady’s Island could become the next Summerville, or the next Mt. Pleasant. Neither is a desirable outcome.
The problem isn’t a lack of awareness that Lady’s Island needs a re-design. The problem is we’ve thrown nickels and dimes at these planning initiatives - $75,000 for the Lady’s Island Plan, and another $75,000 for the Lady’s Island Corridor Study to document traffic. Helpful, but piecemeal. By contrast, the county this year committed $750,000 just to repair tennis courts.
Getting a master plan for Lady’s Island should not have been this difficult. Residents want a meaningful plan. Elected officials say they want the same. Developers and businesses would see immediate benefits and could better predict how the island will build out. A true master plan for Lady’s Island is likely to cost on the order of 2/10ths of one percent of the recently approved Beaufort County budget. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a lot of money, even compared to improving tennis courts.
We can still ensure that Lady’s Island grows up to be the vibrant, livable, walkable community envisioned in the Lady’s Island Plan, but at least three things need to happen.
The City and the county need to set political differences aside and agree to move now to save Lady’s Island. We all live here and are responsible for what happens to Lady’s Island.
Second, we must commit sufficient funding to bring in professionals to do the planning work. This is a task beyond the skills of a community committee, and requires more time and resources that are available from city and county staff.
And finally, at the onset, the city and county must commit to implementing the professional planner’s work. This doesn’t mean accepting a plan blindly, but it does mean we take seriously the planning that is done and commit to making something happen.
One thing we should all agree on: the time for talking about the future of Lady’s Island is over.
Time is running out, and we’re just standing around.
Charles G. Newton, Jr. is chairman of the Sea Island Corridor Coalition.